Lots of blawgs are discussing Google Scholar right now, but I don't see anyone talking about how nice it is that this service lets you view or search for virtually any case at any time on your iPhone (or other smartphone). Now, even if you are out of your office, you can quickly search for cases or pull up a specific case on your iPhone for free.

Doug Lichtman is a tenured law professor at UCLA who started a podcast six months ago called Intellectual Property Colloquium. Each month, Lichtman posts an hour-long conversation about a patent, copyright,
or technology topic. The line-up of guests is fantastic. Here, for example, is a summary of the January show--

The Honorable Paul Michel currently serves as Chief Circuit Judge for the Federal District and, in that role, has overseen a period of enormous growth and change in the patent system. In this audio presentation, Chief Judge Michel joins moderator Doug Lichtman to talk patent reform, thinking not only about what has been accomplished in recent Supreme Court and Federal Circuit decisions, but also about what work is left ahead for Congress, the Supreme Court, the Patent Office, and the Federal Circuit itself.

Some of the other topics since the show began: "Privacy in a Networked World," "Everyone Hates DRM," and "In Re Bilski."

There's also CLE credit. As Lichtman wrote in an email, "One charm of the site is that we offer completely free CLE credit to lawyers who listen. All of our previous shows qualify in New York, California, Texas, Illinois, and Washington, and we plan to add more states later this year."

Each show also contains suggested reading material. It's a pretty slick operation--and all for free.

In many jurisdictions, you can find court-approved interrogatories, such as model interrogatories for motor vehicle, medical malpractice, and divorce cases approved by the Illinois Supreme Court.

Even if your case doesn't fall under one of the standard categories, you can still use the model interrogatories for drafting your own discovery. Not only does the use of a form make drafting discovery easier, but it will also help you later in fending off objections. The closer your discovery is to a court-approved form, the easier it will be to argue that your opponent's objection is not well-taken.

So powerful is the argument that "the interrogatory my opposing counsel is objecting to is identical to one approved by the courts," that it often makes sense to look at court-approved interrogatories when preparing to argue objections, even if you didn't use the model interrogatories in the first place.

In an article in the July issue of the Illinois Bar Journal, "Finding Free Legal Articles on the Web" (ISBA membership required), Tom Gaylord suggests these sources for finding free online law-review articles--

Since there's no getting around Google, you should make sure you're using it effectively. A recent article from the National Law Journal by Tracey Rich -- "How Lawyers Can Improve Search Results" -- might give you the answer.

The article deals with advance search techniques and "ways to determine the reliability of a Web site." It has some good ideas. Meanwhile, you can also check out the following related posts on this weblog:

A new website called Litilaw offers "published articles for litigators" with this introduction--

Welcome to our free collection of hundreds of recently published articles of interest to litigators and related legal professionals. All articles are full-text, written by lawyers and have been published as part of continuing legal education (CLE) seminars, in legal journals, or are of similar quality. Litilaw links to copies of articles available on the internet . . .

Need to know when your client is sued in federal court? Justia Federal Court Filings allows you to see new filings by state, court, or subject matter. You can even set up RSS feeds to track the information you need to know. Link from Learning to Practice.